Winter Meeting
by Enji Da
Summary: The white snow, the cold weather, the chilled skin, the knitted scarves, and the bundled up people. Kagome's back against the snowdrifts, her eyes drifting to the window of the coffee shop her brother worked at, she saw him dressed in traditional attire. It was then that Kagome knew that you could keep her from the past but you couldn't keep her from Inuyasha.


The snow was piled high on the streets of Tokyo, making drifts that towered over Kagome's head. As she passed down the busy sidewalk, careful to avoid patches of ice and others (though they seemed to care little as she felt elbow after elbow jabbed into her and angered whispers of "excuse me"). Cars honked and people cursed, causing sigh after sigh to leave her chapped, chilled lips.

Stuck, that was what Kagome was. She felt as if she was stuck in ice that refused to melt. Moment after moment Kagome felt as if she were trying to chip away at the snowdrifts but the workers kept piling more and more in its place.

The clacking of heels on the cement deafened Kagome. The sound made her want to pull her hands from her pockets and slip them under her ear muffs to cover her ears. She wanted to cry out to the women passing her by in business suits that they should wear sneakers, not heels. She wanted to run from the streets, back to the shrine where she could pretend that it was still five hundred years ago and that just down the beaten dirt path was a demon slayer and a monk who'd settled down and planned on having twenty kids.

But Kagome couldn't pretend. She had to eat, breathe, and sleep in a world that wasn't as pure, wasn't as kind, wasn't as pretty. Every day she opened her eyes to light bulbs, not candles, and the sound of punk-rock bands coming from her brother's room, not a shamisen. She had to breathe in the polluted air and feel her lungs rotting in her chest because of the foul concentration of it. Kagome couldn't pretend that when she let an arrow fly, a pink aura engulfing it, that it was headed for the heart of a demon, not the side of the house.

Someone pushed her to the side, their elbow making contact with her ribcage in a motion that made an "unf" leave her lips. She found her back against one of the snowdrifts and her butt on the cold ground. Unpacked snow fell from the snowdrift onto her shoulders, on top of her head, and into her lap. She could feel someone's spilt coffee seeping into her pants and she groaned.

This just wasn't Kagome's day, nor was this her world.

And how badly Kagome wanted to cry in that moment as the people on the street passed her by, completely ignoring her sitting on her butt. Here she was, a girl so out of place and so yearning for a world that she would never see, sitting on her butt in a world that suffocated her. All she was trying to do was go see her brother and pretend that everything was right but no, fate had to hate her.

She looked up, snow falling from atop her head. She shook her head, looking around as tears stung her eyes in a threat. She quickly found the sign that read Miyojin Coffee. It was the place she'd been headed, the place Souta worked. Her eyes drifted down from the sign.

Instantly her grey eyes caught on him.

The man was dressed traditionally. His attire was red, a string of purple beads and small white bone beads that resembled fangs. His hair was silver, and though she could not see his eyes for a book hid them from her she guessed them to be a hardened gold.

Instantly Kagome cried out, dragging the attention of a couple of people from their phones as they stared at the woman sitting on the cold ground, staring with a passion at a window. With a shake of their heads, they looked away, some even rolling their eyes. Kagome paid little heed to them and what they thought of her as stumbled to her feet and stumbled through the people. He was alive and that was all that mattered.

The bell jingled as she wrapped her hand around the bar and pulled the door open. Warm air and the scent of fresh baked pastries filled her senses. Her brother called out to her in an excited fashion. In return, Kagome flashed him a happy smile as she hurried to the table she'd seen him out.

He was still there, the mug of steaming coffee he'd been drinking now moved a couple inches. The book he read was a classic, _The Sound of the Mountain _by Kawabata Yasunari. As she approached, he lowered the book to see who was headed towards him, a small movement changing the fold of the bandanna he wore over the top of his head.

And he gaped at her.

Hardened gold met hopeful grey and Kagome bit back the second strangled cry that wanted to rush past her lips in five minutes. It really was him, was Inuyasha. The man before her was the hanyō she'd loved and left nearly five-hundred years in the past.

Inuyasha had aged. Just from her eyes alone she could tell. The hanyō in front of her didn't look to be sixteen or seventeen as he had when she knew him. He was easily in his late twenties to early thirties, at least in human years. That age also reflected in the book he read, not the Battle Royale that the Inuyasha from five hundred years prior would have been caught with but the simple classic that was _The Sound of the Mountain_.

She sat across from him, both staring at each other almost like if they looked away, the other would vanish into a puff of smoke. He slid a bookmark into the place he was at, his eyes never leaving hers as he set the book down gently.

If anyone looked at them, they would know what was going on. They were two lovers who hadn't seen each other in years, two lovers who thought that their gazes would never lock again or that their hair would never tangle in the wind once more. Anyone could see the longing, the desire, the relief that the two sitting at a coffee shop table held in their eyes. They could see the trembling of the woman's lip, the trembling that threatened to explode in billions of tearful words. And they could see the hope and joy that the hidden hanyō had upon the sight of her.

And they said nothing at first, just staring at each other in shock. She didn't ruin the moment with billions of stuttered words and he didn't destroy the air with a biting quip.

And finally, shaking as she did so, Kagome reached out and stroked his cheek. He closed his eyes and leaned into her touch and both knew then and there that this was real and that this was eternal. Fate could not keep the hanyō and the miko apart, even if it kept them from the past.


End file.
